I
LIKE another foreigner, I had my ideal of the Irishwoman—bewitching, naturally, but built upon somewhat hackneyed and high-coloured lines: vivacious play of feature, blue-black hair, violet eyes, and complexion made up of lilies and roses. So when Trueberry, the gallantest friend man ever found on English shores, asked me to join him in a trip to Erin, imagination hastily evoked this resplendent creature of my desire, and I straightway proposed to myself the pleasing excitement of a flirtatious romance. I told Trueberry I thought nothing more delightful than the prospect I had formed, to fall in love, and ride away. Trueberry, in his fatal Saxon way, made some grim rejoinder about the riding away being the pleasantest part of it.
We shot and rode and fished, and stared at the girls, without any fervour of glance or flutter of pulse, it must be confessed, I alertly on the look-out for this creature of dazzling contrasts and laughing provocation. With fancy still uncomforted, Trueberry was dangerously hurt, and we were several miles distant from the nearest village. A peasant offered to help me carry my comrade down the glen, and assured me that the lady of the grey manor would be glad to receive him. Our claim at the hall was courteously responded to by an old man-servant, who drew a couch out on which we stretched my moaning friend, and then I was directed to the doctor’s house, some way along the uplands. My guide offered me the shelter of his roof hard by, when I spoke of looking for a lodging.
It was late in the afternoon when the doctor and I reached the manor. The sun was level on the western horizon, an arch of misty gold upon a broad sheet of silver lying behind the nearer low-hanging clouds, so that the silver heaven, beyond this chain of grey and opal hills, looked mystically remote and clear, while lower down lake and purple mountains were softened by a fine white veil of mist, and the sea was visible curling its delicate foam upon the crest of the tide among the rocks. The valley below was dusk, shut in by the grand sweep of girdling mountains, and so still was the air that every far-off sound carried, from the echo of ocean’s murmuring to the nearer crash of a waterfall hissing down the rocks, and the pleasant lilt at my feet of a little rivulet lipping its daisied marge. The birds were in full chorus, and each of the dense trees nested song. We left the breezy, wandering moors, which swept the horizon in a measurelessness of space as triumphant and vast seemingly as the illimitable Atlantic rolling from their base, and took the narrow road that sloped down to the glen of firs and oak, where the light could scarce make a path among the deepening shadows. Outside all was great, in air, on land, on water. Here intolerable compression of space and such a diminution of light as to harass nerves and imagination. My preoccupation about Trueberry rather stimulated than blunted my visual faculties, and I noted with abhorrence each detail of the sharp, precise landscape; the thin vein of water glimmering through the darkening grass like a broken mirror, the abrupt curve of the road from the shoulder of the bluff, and the stiff, dim plumes of the heather washed of purple pretension in the twilight, while through a clump of black firs the rough front of the manor made a fainter shade in the grey air. The solitude was scented with the fragrance of wild thyme, and as we approached, old-fashioned odours blew against us from the garden.
Trueberry was restored to a vague consciousness, and lay with shut eyes in a darkened room. I walked outside with the doctor, who was a cheery, hopeful fellow, and in diagnosing my friend’s case, furnished me with no occasion for alarm. I found it strange that no member of the family had come forward to explain the gracious hospitality by a personal interest in the wounded man. As I stood in the chill air musing on this odd unconcern, I heard a light step behind, coming from the house. I turned, and faced the woman who was to dominate my heart by one swift sweep of all that had ever claimed it.
She looked at me, and in one grave, steadfast glance the miracle was accomplished. Is this love? I have been so often, so continuously in love, and yet have never known anything that approached it. It was like the mystery of life and death—not to be explained, not to be conquered, not to be eluded. It needs no will to be born, to die; so it needs no will to surrender to such an influence. Upon a single throb of pulse, it has established itself permanently upon the altar of life, and sentimental fancies and shabby yearnings drop out of memory with the sacramental transfusion of soul.
Of course I saw that she was a beautiful woman, but this only afterwards. What I first saw was the deep impersonal gaze that drew the heart from my breast. It met mine with a full, free beam, and held it upon a wave of inexplicable emotion. Bondage to it was a glory, a consecration of my manhood. The subtle, the elusive nature of my captivation was the spiritual point upon an ordinary passion. It was the spurs, the belt of knighthood. For this I understood to be no mere command of senses, but the imperative claims of life-long allegiance, whether for suffering or for happiness.
Perhaps by nature I was attuned to such surrender. Since ever romantic hopes first broke their deeps in my boyish brain, and my heart was lifted on the first warm wave of desire, I have eagerly yearned for free passionate servitude to one sovereign lady. There was always the mediæval strain in me, though I have fluttered idly enough, like the moth round the flame, and hovered in a sort of protective sympathy and admiration, round pretty womanhood, not objecting to being trampled on as a holocaust to graceful and bewildering caprice. But now had come the enslavement of the soul, not of the senses; of the spirit, not of the eye. Homage did not bend in banter, but was exalted on the wings of reverence. It was only afterwards that I remembered the details of the face: its unchanging pallor and exceeding finish, the peculiar unrippling sheen of the blonde hair, like gold leaf in its unshaded polish, the inner curves of coil as deep an amber as the outer edges, without shadow of curl or ring round neck and temple. So smooth and shining a frame was admirably adjusted to the small, grave, glacial oval, with its look of wistful abstracted charm, with a delicate chiselling only an inspired pencil could copy, with an exquisite line from brow to chin. Such was the transparency of the colourless skin that like a shell, it seemed in the light to reflect the warm rose of life beneath. Under the arch of the unerring brows, long grey eyes, shadowed blackly, that in girlhood must have presaged storm, but now the black lay broodingly, a seal to the clear grey depths. You looked into, not through them; and found them too bewilderingly unstirred by the yearning trouble of the gazer.
There was, perhaps, a conscious but not an undignified expression in her dress. Sweeping folds of grey matched the austere stillness of her eyes, as did the full cambric of throat a wanness reminiscent of a mediæval saint. Long sleeves lined with silk fell backward, and the inner ones were of crimped cambric: hardly affectation, but the supreme touch to beauty so visibly haloed as hers. Her voice was in keeping with the clear eloquence of her glance; full, unperturbed, sustained without conscious modulation or trick, harmonious like all sounds of natural sweetness. It fell with the sentence, as the Irish voice habitually does, but softly, without abrupt cadences or huskiness.
‘All that lies in our power for your friend’s care and comfort will be done,’ she said, after her unhurried survey of me. ‘There is little to offer in such an out-of-the-way place but home medicines and home resources, and there will not be much in the way of distraction for him, since I live here alone with my children, and my solitude is unbroken. I regret that you have decided to lodge elsewhere, but pray do not spare us your visits. The house is your friend’s, and I am honoured in being of use to him.’
It was hardly a bow she made, but drooped her eyelids with a curious movement, and lowered her chin from its ineffable upward line. The words I scarcely heard, though every fibre trembled with emotion at her speech. I thought the voice, with the softening syllables dropping into silence, more exquisite than any music dreamed of. Its tones accompanied me as a murmur rather than the remembrance of actual words in my walk up to the free bluff, whence I could look down on the grey manor, and mixed with the resounding roar of ocean, as the wind blew the melody of the waves shoreward. What was the distinction of this woman who through all the days to come offered me rapture and agony by noontide and by midnight? Not her beauty so much as her essential difference from others. Not the gleaming gold of her hair, but the solemn simplicity of her bearing in such accord with the vast and unbroken solitude around her. Her voice I acknowledged without shrinking or terror, as we accept all essential elements, to be henceforth the dominant key of life for me, the note to sound my depths and touch me at will as an impassive instrument. Was this woman free? I asked myself, with a thrill of revolt, as I remembered her mention of children. But no word of husband! This fact let in a ray of hope upon my dread. I could never again belong to myself with the cheap security of an hour ago, and what was there for me if there was no room for me in the chambers of her heart?
At the cottage I found my host frying some salmon for supper. He was a tall, bent peasant, meagre and pallid from much thinking and under-feeding, with all the Celt’s quaint mixture of melancholy and humour in his keen blue eyes and wrinkled smile. He did the honours of his humble dwelling with stately courtesy, and was too proud and well-bred to offer futile apologies for the poverty of his shepherd fare and rude bed.
‘Your friend, sir, is not anything worse, I trust,’ he said. I gave him the doctor’s report, and said it was now a case for complete rest and care. I reddened with remorse, remembering how little I had been thinking of Trueberry.
‘Ah, ’tis he that’s in excellent hands,’ said the peasant, turning the salmon, and then dreamily rested his cheek against the closed hand that held the fork, with his elbow supported on the other wrist.
‘May I not learn to whom we are indebted for so much kindness?’ I asked tremulously.
‘Your friend, sir, is at the house of Lady Brases Fitzowen,’ he answered, and I shrank beneath the sharp look he cast on me. ‘’Tis herself, sure, we all love and delight in as if she was one of God’s angels.’
This seemed to me in my exalted mood as such an obvious statement that I received it with the same simplicity it had been uttered. Were we not brother Celts,—albeit, I a Parisianised Breton, and he an illiterate native of wild Kerry uplands? His tribute to the lady of my destiny raced a flame through me like a delicious flattery.
‘I have seen her,’ I said, striving to command my voice in unconfessing tones. ‘I can quite believe you. I should like to know something of her, if you will not deem my curiosity an impertinence. She spoke of her children. Does her husband live?’
‘He does,’ the peasant answered, I thought sullenly.
I caught a fork fiercely in my hand, and bent to trace figures with it on the cloth, hoping thereby to shield my excessive pain from his sharp scrutiny.
‘She did not mention him to me,’ I half cried.
‘’Tis natural. They’re no longer one.’
Oh, the warm revulsion, the wild joy in that queer reply. I read in it the peasant’s definition of divorce. It sprang light and flame through me, and heated senses benumbed a moment ago. It gave definiteness to rash hope, and melted away all doubt and apprehension. Brases free was to be wooed. Heaven knows conceit was never more eliminated from self-judgment than then, but I felt the urgent claim of the rare passion so instantaneously born. All my worth lay in the quality of that love, and it was not such that any woman could reject without a pang.
‘Then she is free,’ I said, and heard the thrill in my own voice.
‘Free!’ exclaimed the peasant, frowning. ‘That’s as may be. Them Protestants believe such-like things, but we don’t, sir. However things happen, we hold folk once married can only be freed by death. I take it, sir, you come from foreign parts, though ’tis a wonder to me how you have learnt the English tongue so well. May be, beyond in your land, they’re like the Protestants, and play fast and loose with the marriage tie.’
He laid the dish of salmon on the table, and disappeared outside. My state of mixed emotions, of exasperated nerves, of pulses throbbing against my consciousness like a discordant instrument, anger with that prejudiced peasant predominating, reduced me to the level of savage and child. The fellow in his implied abhorrence of divorce was so aggravatingly phlegmatic, so heartlessly unconscious of all it might mean for me. I did not knock him down or force him to eat his obnoxious words, but sat still and endeavoured not to observe the rest of his rational preparations for the evening meal. I was on fire for further facts of the tale, but dared not question, in my uncontrollable temper. When the peasant at length seated himself opposite me, with a dish of salmon, smoking potatoes, and a bottle of potheen between us, I was able to make a fair pretence of hunger. I had no difficulty in praising the salmon and the big flowery potatoes, the best of the world, and novelty supplied the needful sauce. The potheen was simply barbarous, a suitable drink for Caliban or the Indian brave, and no amount of water could soothe it to my French palate. But between lively grimaces over it, I was enabled to ask, without self-betrayal—
‘Then, I suppose, Lady Fitzowen’s husband does not live at the manor?’
He looked at me gravely over his glass, and nodded.
‘They are divorced?’
‘Not quite as I should say. Separated, they call it.’
Here was a toppling down of the airiest edifice built of gossamer. I could have cried out at the stab like any thwarted child. And yet the barrier of a living husband, like an unclean skeleton, between us, made that vision in the early twilight no less pure and spiritual than when not seen across the tragic story, married widowhood. A widow, still had sanctity lain upon my suit, where now reproach would lie as a pall. Suppose my love drew hers, how should I live through terror of waking some poisonous snake to her mortal injury, of the nameless dread of slander to breathe its dark flame against her sinless brow? A shadow upon such devotion as mine was an unacceptable desecration. Torture itself prompted me to further questioning.
‘Was it she who sought separation?’
‘I believe it was her people, sir. He was a bad lot, they say, wild after the women, and not over nice in his ways. She’s gentle now, but she was proud and passionate as a girl, and she felt the shame of the thing and ran. ’Tis a wonder the poor crathurs don’t oftener run, the provocation thim fine gentlemen gives them. Anyway, her people settled the matter, and she came to live here, ’tis now close on four years ago. The second child was born here, God bless it, and we all love it like our own.’
I went outside to smoke a cigarette in the solitude of starlit night. One never wants for proof of how much cruelty, shame, misery, and injustice may be gathered into an innocent girl’s existence by marriage. I had already seen much of it, and was familiar with the musings melancholy contemplation of it provoked. But here was matter not for musing but for fiery revolt. Every nerve thrilled with a sympathy so complete as to make her retrospective pain most personally mine, to thrust my individuality from its old bright environment out for ever into her desperate loneliness. Joy seemed to me a miserable mockery, the portion of trivial, contemptible humanity. The best proof of moral worth lay in the excess of suffering endured. Virtue was measured by the degree of pain, and laughter dwelt with the ignoble jesters and clowns. Sorrow was a diadem upon that golden head, I murmured, and looked for confirmation in the cold radiance of the stars above, darting their shuttles of lambent flame in and out the purple depths of sky.
I peered down through the darkness, searching for the grey manor among the massive shadows. But no lighted window revealed it to my yearning gaze, and somehow I felt glad that Brases had suffered. Tears were the mark of the elect, and had given her eyes that penetrating, unjoyous clearness of the stars, had given her beautiful lips their set line of austere silence, had placed on that frail white brow the conquering seal of valour and forbearance. A passion so remote from whimpering sentiment as that which she had inspired, was one to take pride in, and I cared not now whether grief or weal were my portion, for I, too, was crowned, and, like her, stood apart.
I was glad to face the wide, empty moors by sunrise. The valley lay below the brilliantly lit mountain shoulder, where scarcely a shadow offered rest for the eyes. The Reeks opening out, peak upon peak, glittering and wild, made a magnificent picture. Here a crescent of shattered points, there a sunny tarn through the hollow of the cliff, shot with amber rays; and downward, deep valley beyond deep valley, dusk with foliage, and broken by zigzag pathways. I sat on the shelf of a rock, whence I could perceive the glen and grey mass of the manor. An eagle sweeping over the brow of the bluff, the shrill cry of curlews in their undulary shoreward flight, presaging tempest, the thunder of the Atlantic in the steady roll of its surges, were the sole sounds in my majestic solitude.
I sat and dreamed, and filled in the unknown pages of that one volume now for me, the life of an innocent and high-spirited girl, urged in the passivity of an untroubled heart into an uncongenial marriage. The thought that she might have loved a worthless husband was an intolerable smart, and I rejected it for the more bearable belief that she had entered bondage in a neutral condition, without any apprehension of the warmer moments of life, unawakened to the imperious claims of the heart.
And in dwelling bitterly on the penalties of such experience, the illimitable price exacted for limitable error, I started to my feet in angry denial that part of the price was the harsh sentence against other choice. What did it matter if the world’s wisdom rebuked our folly? What did it matter if the callous eye saw stain where I felt glory? What did anything matter, so long as I had the will to leap all barriers that lay between Brases and me? To pass through flame and wave, so that she was on the other side of peril with outstretched arms?
The manor, with its air of rude decay, was curious rather than picturesque. It fronted a lawn that dropped into a thick plantation of fir, along which ran a silver trout-stream. The gravelled walks wandered away into the woodlands that waved in brilliant arches of beech and larch by an upward slope to the horizon, where the spires of pine scalloped the skyline. Trueberry was asleep, so I amused myself by inspecting the portraits of the hall. They were all members of my hostess’s family. That was obvious, even if the old butler had not informed me of the fact. A fair lady in velvet and long ruffles looked at me with her clear eyes, just so sweet, but bolder, and one tall girl was so vividly like her that I greeted her with a flame of enamoured recognition I would not dare bestow on the living woman. The same gold-leaf of hair, the same exquisite intangibility of look, the same wanness of cheek and ineffable upward line of chin and brow.
When at last I saw Trueberry, I found him coherent and eager for my visit. He lay in a faded, heavily-curtained room, so old and dim that the bright rays of morning penetrating through the crimson curtains sparkled incongruously, and turned squares of the silk into blood-red. Coming in from the sunlit air, its sombreness shot me blind, and I could see nothing until I had blinked the sun out of my eyes.
‘What a dark room!’ I cried.
‘Oh, it’s a delightful room,’ said Trueberry dreamily, with the look of a visionary. ‘I’m so glad I had that accident, and was carried in here. Visions seem to start out of half-forgotten romances, and everything is suggestive. It’s so dark and quaint and big. Just the room to be ill in, and not mope. I like my condition, too, now that pain is on the wane. Fact and fancy are so deliciously inextricable. I never know what is really happening and what I am imagining. Last night I saw a picture that seemed to be real, and was in perfect harmony with the antique air of the room. A sort of Saint Elizabeth in a mediæval frame. You know one’s ideal of St Elizabeth?’ he added, looking at me with a little quizzical stir in his languid glance. ‘Sweet, serious, and lovely, carrying roses from heaven, and smiling softly on children and the sick. She smiled at me when she saw me staring.’
‘Your hostess?’ I asked, chill with apprehension.
‘I suppose so, if it wasn’t a dream. There’s fever in my blood still, and at night the imagination is a terrible agent. Yet the picture remains so distinct upon memory: the voice was so real, so musical, I can hear it still.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said, curious and alarmed.
‘I was trying to make out my surroundings in the dull lamplight, and wondering where you were, when a curtain was lifted by the whitest hand I have ever seen, and framed in the folds was a beautiful pale woman in grey. She held a lamp high up, and the light caught and played over her brilliant hair till it shone like living gold. I feared to wink lest the vision should vanish. The light revealed the bust, while the folds of the skirt fell into heavy shadow. It was the crimped white about neck and wrists and the long queer sleeves that made me imagine fever had evoked some recollection of Italian galleries—half Giotto, half Botticelli: but she actually moved, and the unfathomable gravity of her gaze held mine, and when she smiled, I ceased to feel pain.’
He spoke almost to himself, as if he had forgotten my presence, and as I looked down at him, so drowsily contented, I saw the old tragic monster lifting its terrible head between us. For the first time I was conscious of a jealous pang in contemplation of his favour of person. Grands dieux! and I so fatally ugly! And if Trueberry had possessed nothing but good looks, I had my brains and my reputation to balance that advantage. But he was no mere hero of sentimental girlhood—he was a handsome, high-bred gentleman, with all the finest qualities to repay a noble woman’s love, with all the personal charm to captivate a fastidious woman’s fancy. What had won my admiring friendship might be trusted to win Brases’ responsive love:—his sincerity, a certain picturesque dash that always made me think of Buckingham as described by Dumas—Anne of Austria’s Buckingham. It breathed so essentially the high air of romance, the chivalry, the ennobling sentimentality of vigorous manhood. He was no troubadour, but as I have said, Buckingham to the heels in modern raiment, unflinching before peril, of delightful manners, faithful to friend, implacable to foe, brilliant, generous, and full of romantic spirit. Such a woman as Brases I deemed above susceptibility to a mere facile charm of manner, averse from so vulgar a quality as fascination. But Trueberry did not fascinate: he captivated. He carried sunshine with him to appeal to the austerest temperament, and in some subtle way, without an effort, became a need. A more attractive manliness was nowhere to be met, and if in friendship I found him indispensable, what would he not be to the woman whose heart he won?
Should I repeat the peasant’s talk? Better not. Silence between us was best until speech could not be avoided. So I took an aching heart back to the cottage, with a promise to return in the afternoon.